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FILM; The 50-Year Hoffman-Hackman History

Published: October 12, 2003

LONG before they'd made the acquaintance of Warren Beatty and Mike Nichols, and long before they'd won enough Oscars and Golden Globes to play a nice game of chess, Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman were a mismatched pair of struggling, idealistic actors who found solace in each other's company -- first in classes at the Pasadena Playhouse in 1956, where they played bongos on the roof, and then later in a cold-water flat in Manhattan, where Mr. Hoffman crashed in Mr. Hackman's kitchen until he was banished to the couch of some unwitting dupe named Robert Duvall. Though Mr. Hackman and Mr. Hoffman (now 73 and 66, respectively) have been friends for nearly half a century, they never worked on a film together until ''Runaway Jury,'' the latest installment in the John Grisham franchise. On a recent publicity stop in New Orleans for the film, opening Friday, the two men met with the writer Jennifer Senior to reminisce, gossip and reveal Marlon Brando's secret weapon.

JENNIFER SENIOR -- When you two met at the Pasadena Playhouse, there must have been something about each other you intuited immediately. What was it?

GENE HACKMAN -- Yeah, I've thought about that. (Looking at Hoffman.) You were a little different. Most of the kids there were right out of high school. I was older. And you were 18 or 19, but the first time I saw you, you were in a, uh, a corduroy vest. And that's all.

DUSTIN HOFFMAN -- Pants!

HACKMAN -- But just a corduroy vest. No shirt or anything. And I thought, ''This is a weird looking little guy.''

HOFFMAN -- I have no memory of this.

HACKMAN -- I only went one year ----

HOFFMAN -- Three months! He got kicked out for not having any talent.

HACKMAN -- We used to get graded on a scale of 1 to 10 for movement, interpretation, gestures ----

HOFFMAN -- Attitude.

HACKMAN -- Attitude.

HOFFMAN -- Voice projection, which you always failed. So they kicked him out. But I was shocked, because he was still picked to be on their main stage.

HACKMAN -- But only because I was older, you know? In a play called ''The Curious Miss Caraway.''

HOFFMAN -- And guess who starred in it?

HACKMAN -- Zasu Pitts, a woman from the silent film era.

HOFFMAN -- And one day, he says to me, ''You have to come onstage with me during the daytime. You're not going to believe this.'' Written on the back of the couches and the stuffed chairs and everything were ----

HACKMAN -- Zasu Pitts's lines.

HOFFMAN -- She'd flit over to a certain chair for a certain line . . . (He gets up and demonstrates, as if reading.)

HACKMAN -- She was about 75, 80 years old.

HOFFMAN -- Of course, we understand that at our age. Brando has it down pat: he wears a hearing aid that you can't see, and a woman by the name of Caroline, who's off the set, feeds him his lines. Each one. Matthew Broderick told me he didn't know this when he did ''The Freshman'' with Brando. He told me that on his first day, he was sitting in his dorm on the edge of his bed, and Brando was on the other bed, and they were facing each other, and he was so intimidated -- Marlon Brando! So they started the take, and he's talking, and Brando answers, and then he talks some more, and Brando answers, and the camera's rolling, and Brando keeps looking at Matthew, and suddenly, he says: ''Caroline? Caroline! Are you eating a tuna fish sandwich right now? Caroline? Because I can't understand what you're saying! Stop eating that tuna fish sandwich!''

HACKMAN -- (Doubled over.) Now that's funny.

SENIOR -- When you two were living together, were you especially competitive with each other? You both had your breakout films in 1967, which probably helped ----

HOFFMAN -- Do you know why? Did you know that he was Mr. Robinson, originally, in ''The Graduate''? And he got fired. That's how he got into ''Bonnie and Clyde.'' Warren found out he was available.

SENIOR -- Did you land him the role in ''The Graduate''?

HOFFMAN -- No. I had nothing to do with it. I would have done everything in my power to not have him in it. I didn't want to be upstaged.

SENIOR -- Why were you fired from ''The Graduate''?

HACKMAN -- Probably because I hadn't committed to the character. I just wasn't showing them what could happen.

HOFFMAN -- Gene believes in holding off for as long as you can before you commit. So that when you commit, it's not a conscious choice; it comes out on its own. And that scares a lot of producers and directors.

HACKMAN -- We were both jealous of Bobby Duvall, because he got the work very early on, whereas I was in New York seven or eight years before I got a professional job. And you were even longer, right?

HOFFMAN -- Yes. It's a freak accident that we, all three of us, made it. Gene went on auditions many times and put his 8-by-10 glossy underneath the door, knocked once and ran.

SENIOR -- Was that effective?

HOFFMAN -- Yes. It saved him a lot of pain of rejection.

HACKMAN -- To this day, I do the same relaxation exercises I was taught in acting class in 1956 or whenever it was.